


... I Wish I Was

by volatilehearted (anomalagous)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Introspection, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-08 03:23:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1924896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomalagous/pseuds/volatilehearted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The walls of his house are lined with pictures of other peoples' children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The walls of his house are lined with pictures of other peoples' children.

It wasn't that he'd never had  _time_ for children of his own, although if he lets himself think back on it far enough, there was probably an  _element_ of that underneath it all. It was more that having children the common way had never been an  _option_ , and adopting--well. They'd never really fit the  _ideal candidates_ . Scott had always thought that was some kind of cosmic  _pity_ , that there were so many children in the world needing the love of committed parents and so many people in the system willing to stand in the way with the weight of their own prejudice. He would have liked to have been a father instead of everybody's favorite uncle.

Some things just weren't meant to be.

The halls of his house are too long and empty these days. They'd moved from Beacon Hills once they'd gotten to a certain age; the protection of the city and guardianship of the Nemeton had been passed to the mostly-competent hands of a new pack. Scott felt at the time--he  _still_ feels--they'd been better prepared than his pack had ever been. They'd moved so that they wouldn't have to weather the questions, growing more pointed and more worried, about Scott's  _baby face_ , into a place where there was enough space for the pack to congregate and run and be  _pack_ together if and when they wanted. The house sits on ten acres of untouched land which make it easy to run when the moon is bright and Scott is  _well aware_ he's turned into some shadow of a Hale in his old age.

He doesn't mind that much. Mostly he only minds that there isn't anyone that comes to visit any longer. Life is lonely for a wolf without a pack, even an alpha. Maybe especially an alpha; it's been so long since Scott has been anything else, he isn't sure how it feels to be different any longer.

Mostly he only minds that he spends his nights alone.

He'd been told, when he was bitten or shortly after, that it would extend his life, allowing him to cling to youth and vitality longer than a human would. He'd believed it, in an abstract sort of way that teenagers also believe in heart disease and hip replacements. In a way that hadn't mattered. He'd survived high school and fumbled through two lukewarm relationships before he'd finally been honest with himself about the itch that sat beneath his skin and the identity of the long, pale fingers that could scratch it. He'd confessed his sins in April under the warm breath and upturned, smirking lips of that infuriating boy it had turned out he'd always loved. They got married not that September but the one after it, in the evening, under a rising moon. The ceremony had been small but it had been everything he'd needed.  _Stiles_ had been everything he needed, sure and steady under his hands.

Over the years, he realized what the bite, sometimes blessing and sometimes curse, had really meant. He watched as every care etched its legacy into Stiles' animate face; he developed laugh lines and worry lines in equal measure, crows' feet and hooks at the edge of his mouth that could go up or down at a moment's notice, used to both smiling and frowning. By the time Scott had started show his wear and grow grey around his temples, Stiles' hair had lost all its dark luster entirely. It thinned but never went away entirely, seeming to gain in craziness what it had lost in robustness. Their apparent age difference widened and eventually, about the time they had moved out into the middle of nowhere, it had become more common for them to be mistaken for  _father_ and  _son_ than for lovers. Scott's feelings for Stiles had never faltered, his conviction that there was still that boy he'd fallen for inside an aging man, but he had seen the hurt and the guilt that stuttered through the human's amber eyes every time the mistake was made.

Stiles' body had failed before his mind had, and in some selfish way Scott thought that had been better. He had been so worried it would be the other way around, but Scott had afforded himself  _lucky_ ; he'd had Stiles, the essential bits of Stiles, the only part of Stiles that  _mattered,_ until the human's end of days. They'd had so many indefatigable days, nearly a century of some kind of deep, incomprehensible love which had spanned from the first day they'd met until the last day he'd sat, crouched next to Stiles' bed, listening to his lover's breathing fade and his heart still. Stiles had died crying, but he'd died smiling, too, and that was really all that Scott could have asked for.

Now, it's eight years later, and despite the fact that Scott has passed into the place where he has to count his age in triple digits, his body shows no inclination to slow down. He looks like he is in his sixties at absolute most and he's so,  _so_ aware of that every morning when he looks at the hollows in the eyes of his reflection. He has a long road before him, thirty years or more, without his anchor, his counterbalance, his partner in crime and  _all other things_ . Thirty years with the heart of him in a pine box in the ground. He understands, now, why the wolf is warned not to fall in love with the moon, just as intimately as Scott understands that he could never have done any differently.

He takes the ring off of his left hand and holds it up to the light, reading the inscription on the inside.  _You've still got me_ . It makes his smile fragile and watery, it makes his fingertips shake just slightly as he picks up the necklace chain off of his dresser and threads it through the ring. He fastens it around his neck and for a moment, the ring lays against his bare, dark skin like the moon reflected on the water. Scott traces the circle with one finger wistfully. "Not anymore, buddy. Not any more."

Then he nods, to no one but himself, and pitches forward onto his hands and knees, letting the shift take over his body. He surrenders to the wolf, sheds himself of all pretense of needing to  _stay human_ but for the ring and the promise he made to Stiles once, a long time ago, now secure around his neck and hidden beneath the thick ruff of fur where no one will be able to find it and take it from him. He trots down the stairs, out the open portal of his front door, and out into the woods.

There was nothing to be human for any longer.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The wolf has no pack.

He knows he had one, once. He has the memory of their scents in his nose, although his mind can't recall the shapes of their bodies or the colors of their fur. That's fine, it doesn't bother him, because wolves don't pay much mind to visual memories. Scent is so much more telling, so much more revealing, and he can remember their scents as if they were worked into his pelt. A part of him.

The wolf has no mate.

He knows he had one of  _those_ once, too. He holds that scent-memory most sacred, because he can't remember why he stopped smelling it. It's been a long time. He wants it back, it's the company he most wants to keep. He's spent a long time looking for it. It hasn't been around to find.

So the wolf has protected the woods, he has hunted and lived and he hasn't pined, exactly, because wolves rarely feel something like  _pining_ , but has remained attentive. He has waited, patient as the winter freeze. He has howled, sometimes, to call his mate to him, but it hasn't worked. Where-ever his mate is, is  _very_ , very lost.

Sometimes, humans come into his woods. He knows this, just as he knows that they don't know the woods are his. He lets them pass through. He escorts them, sometimes, when they don't know he's there. A pair of small children once lost themselves deep in the forest, near the bears' territory, and he took them back to the humans' road instead. They don't know any better as adults, and he knows their wisdom diminishes quickly from childhood.

He protects them, since they are too slow and dull to be able to protect themselves. He hunts the things that would hunt them. It's life. For a wolf, it's a good life.

And then there the day comes where he smells that  _scent_ again.

He doesn't have to take any time at all to recognize it, it's been in the front of his mind and his nose every moment of every day. It's been missing from his side and his senses and the ground under his paws. The minute he smells it, he goes still, ears pricked, tail raised, muscles trembling under his fur.

_His mate_ .

The wolf takes off at a quick trot, legs loping over the ground. He keeps his nose down, collecting the shattered fragments of the once-omnipresent scent. Things gather in his mind like shadows, things he doesn't focus on with a goal in mind. Little flickers of realization that somehow become more and more relevant as he moves, skimming low between the trees. His mate. His mate. His mate is  _male_ .

It should matter. It doesn't matter at all. Somehow, it just makes the wolf feel desperation, a foreign emotion. He breaks into a sprint and lets his instincts guide him. The smell of loamy earth and lightning, the smell of spices in a nose that shouldn't have any concept of spice, the smell of home. A sound at the edge of even sensitive ears, urging him onwards. “Come on. Come on. We're almost there. We're almost there.”

His mate is playing with him, he knows suddenly. They used to play this game, when they were young. He is no longer a young wolf, but the idea of it brings new energy to his old limbs. He barks in the darkness of the forest, his running gait gaining a giddy bounce with every stride. He knows this game. Hunt and seek. Find and tackle. Wrestling and laughing and what's laughter and why does that matter? He doesn't know. He just wants to feel that body against his again, long fingers stroking down his side, pale column of a neck bared for him and his teeth, but he'd always been so tender, so careful.

He starts to see flickers like heat-vision. A flash of color here, the tail-end of a foot there. An elbow and a wide-splayed hand rounding a corner. He's so close. He's so  _close_ . He just needs to be a little faster, push himself a little further, and that other half of him that's been denied so long will be his again. He can't give up, even when his breath starts to wheeze in his chest like those old asthma attacks, so, so long ago. For the first time in many years he feels fit poorly in this skin.

Eventually, the chase ends. The wolf staggers, unable to keep up the pace, but his mate, glowing like the moon, has taken pity on him. He's  _there_ , as the wolf steps into the clearing, sitting in the hollow of a tree which had once been a stump, legs crossed and hands on his knees, eyes bright and smile brighter. He's  _there_ .

_Stiles_ .

It all rushes back in like displaced water as the wolf moves into the hollow of the tree, tail wagging hard enough to separate from his body, as he presses into Stiles' laughter and his fingers under the ruff of his fur. Every touch, every moment and memory, the idea that he isn't a wolf at all, he isn't a  _wolf_ , he's a man, he's an old man who was once in love, when he was a boy and his mate was a boy too. He remembers that he's  _Scott McCall_ .

He remembers that Stiles is dead. He has been for years. He doesn't even know how many years it's been, any more. He lost that when he lost himself to the woods.

Scott whines in his chest, ears back, and Stiles laughs, shaking his head. He leans forward to squish both sides of the wolf's face up and press a kiss squarely in the middle of Scott's forehead. “It's okay. It's me. I know. But it's time.”

The old alpha-turned-omega closes his eyes. He accepts those words, maybe only because of the voice that speaks them. If it's a trick, he'll gladly fall for it. Scott will surrender to that mouth again, like he hasn't had the chance to in so long, just for the memories of the time it was good. He lets go of something and when he does he expects to come out old and wizened and gnarled like the roots of the tree.

He doesn't. He matches Stiles, like it could have been possible for him to ever  _not_ . There's a freshness to their faces and their skin that they left behind in high school, and Scott can't find his voice at first, just shaking his head in Stiles' hands and working his mouth. “...I...”

“I know.” Stiles repeats, and it looks like he's crying but he's smiling too. It's the same way he died. Crying and smiling. “It's okay now, Scotty.  _God_ , I missed you. You made me wait so long. I've never been good at patient.”

“I don't understand.” Scott admits, but he pulls one hand up, dirty and ragged but  _God_ , it's a  _hand_ , not a paw, and he can put it along the plush line of Stiles' cheek and feel him. “I don't understand what happened. I thought you were...”

“I am. We, uh.  _We_ are.”

Scott follows Stiles' gaze down and there, cutting through their bodies like a poorly coded video game, is a wolf.  _His_ wolf.  _Him_ . Curled up like it's asleep, looking peaceful and content and grizzled around the muzzle. Scott knows just on instinct that it's dead. “... _Oh_ .”

Stiles tugs his attention back to his face, smiling still. “But it's okay. You were like two hundred, man. It's fine. It happens to everyone. It was a good death. You did good while I was gone. And now you're here.”

“Where's  _here_ ? And why  _are_ we here? I mean, other than Heaven or whatever is supposed to...” He trails off, eyebrows crunching, and Stiles laughs, moving one hand to use his thumbprint to ease out the tension in Scott's face.

“The Nemeton. We tied ourselves to it, don't you remember? We don't go anywhere. We stay here and we guard it. I've been here this whole time.” Stiles keeps looking at Scott's face like he can't see enough of his features at once, like he's drinking in from an oasis after a lifetime in the desert.

Scott can't quite help the little frown he offers. “But...doesn't that mean you've been trapped here for...God, almost a hundred years, has it really been almost a hundred years? Oh Stiles, I'm so  _sorry_ .”

Stiles' smile is oddly persistent. “No, it's okay. It's over. And it wasn't so bad. You were here, even when you didn't know you were you. And now  **you're** here. It'll just be you and me and sometimes the packs that live here asking for help. I mean,  _me_ , I can think of a lot of worse ways to spend eternity.”

Smiling, Scott lets himself press his forehead into Stiles' next kiss, lets himself tug the other boy close and revel in his young, fresh scent. He doesn't know how any of this works, why he can still feel warmth and a pulse and smell a scent from a ghost, but he doesn't care. It doesn't matter. This is all that matters. He slides his eyes closed, murmuring softly, “Yeah. Yeah, me too.”


End file.
